scholarly journals DISADVANTAGEOUS BEHAVIOR FOR ACHIEVING SUSTAINABLE FOOD CONSUMPTION ACCORIDNG TO CONSUMER OPINIONS

Author(s):  
Elżbieta Goryńska-Goldmann

The purpose of the article is to specify behavior considered to be disadvantageous for achieving sustainable consumption by consumers. Sustainable consumption, in economics usually derived from the consumer usefulness theory, is, on the one hand, inseparably linked to the effectiveness of a food supply chain, and on the other, a phenomenon significantly less identifiable and much more difficult to verify. In research, factual material gained through a personal interview survey, conducted in the Greater Poland Voivodship was used. Respondents were chosen with the use of quota and purposive sampling. It was found that consumers are able to see some behavior that are unfavorable for achieving sustainable consumption. The average level of unfavorable behavior (2.25) proves that consumers see such behavior with a relatively low level of disadvantages for achieving sustainable food consumption (in the economic, ecologic and social aspect). Consumers see unfavorable behavior for achieving sustainable consumption as behavior of a low level of disadvantages, including behavior stemming from the cost of moving from a previous model to a sustainable model, which demands spending more time on planning and shopping and creates a need to control personal behavior in terms of shopping logistics, i.e. planning, organizing, storing, buying and consuming products, as well as waste disposal. A very low level disadvantage of achieving sustainable food consumption is connected, according to consumers, with some behavior demanding self-control and self-discipline (e.g. avoiding excessive, disadvantageous consumption), engagement in the life of the local society and spending more time on looking for local products (in order to exchange, borrow, share and foster the community). Information concerning behavior unfavorable for achieving sustainable food consumption can be used for planning and implementing actions aimed at disseminating the idea and increasing consumer awareness.

Author(s):  
Monika Utzig

The aim of the paper is to identify changes in the food consumption of urban and rural households in Poland when it comes to sustainable consumption as well as evaluate if such changes are becoming more or less sustainable. Sustainable consumption is an element of sustainable development, which responds to the basic needs of people while not jeopardizing the needs of future generations. More sustainable food consumption is perceived to be a reduction of overconsumption, a decrease in the consumption of highly processed food and a shift in diet based less on animals and more on plants. The paper is mainly based on data from the Polish Central Statistical Office concerning meat, fruit and vegetable consumption. Some data about food waste were also used. The research shows that the food consumption pattern in rural households is less sustainable than in urban ones. Households living in rural areas consume more meat and less fruit and vegetables than urban ones. There is some evidence that the food consumption pattern in Poland is shifting towards a less sustainable one.


2018 ◽  
Vol 120 (4) ◽  
pp. 749-762 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Luisa Scalvedi ◽  
Anna Saba

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to identify sustainability aspects that overlap with local and organic consumer profiles in order to provide evidence that can be used to promote both kinds of foods in a sustainable food consumption (SFC) integrated framework. Design/methodology/approach Discriminant analysis was applied to a national sample of 3,004 respondents in Italy to separately depict local and organic consumers’ profiles based on personal values, eating habits, food purchase motivations, and involvement. Findings Organic consumption showed a lower penetration compared to local consumption. However, organic consumers adhered to more sustainable consumption principles. Adopting healthy diets and sharing self-transcendence values emerged as common traits of both consumers. Regular consumption made both consumers’ profiles look similar by sharing more sustainability-related traits. Research limitations/implications Only two out of the different types of foods promoted as sustainable were considered. Further insights could be made regarding fair trade foods and food promoted by voluntary sustainability standards. Practical implications The overlapping motivations of the two consumer profiles provided evidence of the potential efficacy of joint promotion in favour of sustainability and demonstrated that a synergic approach among food systems could foster more sustainable consumption. Originality/value This study identified common sustainability motivations among different consumer groups, based on sustainable food categories, adopting a holistic vision of SFC.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (13) ◽  
pp. 5359
Author(s):  
George P. Moschis ◽  
Anil Mathur ◽  
Randall Shannon

Trends in world population growth have created an agri-food demand that is unsustainable under the present resource-intensive agricultural systems and expected growth in income levels in many developing countries. As such, research and policy making related to sustainable development have focused on consumption. One major approach to sustainable consumption lies in shaping food demand that would require changes in people’s present food consumption habits that are excessive and unhealthy, leading to overweight and obesity. In order to change food consumption habits, one must understand the factors that lead to their onset and change. This article offers the life course paradigm, which is increasingly used by social and behavioral scientists to study the development and change of various forms of behavior, as a research framework for studying the onset and change in food consumption habits. It shows how the life course approach could help guide future research not only on sustainable consumption, but also on environmental and social sustainability.


2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 26-34
Author(s):  
Ildikó Kovács

Long-term sustainability of food consumption is in the mainstream of the current trends in the production and consumption patterns of food. A growing number of analyses question this issue nowadays. Despite several papers investigating the profile of sustainable consumers, understanding of the determinants of consumer decision-making and intention towards sustainable food consumption needed further investigation. This study investigates the determinants of sustainable food and food safety on consumer behavior among young customers in Hungary. The objective of this paper is to explore the intention factors of food safety based on sustainable consumption patterns. To gain a better insight into sustainable consumption patterns, the research process was quantitative in nature.


Author(s):  
Tosin Kolajo Gbadegesin

Food security is of great importance in the politics of sustainable consumption and production (SCP) because of its implication on environment and people. The changing climate is adding to world resource problems such as food security, water scarcity, pollution, soil degradation, etc. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and land use demand by agriculture has continued to influence what people quantity and quality of available food. This review used resources from all relevant literatures to examine impact of changing climate on sustainable food consumption by identifying effect of changing climate on nutrition, food production, and food consumption, and provides recommendations on sustainable food consumption measures. The review is of the opinion that food consumption patterns are changing in the face of population growth, economic development, and environmental challenges. Such shifts place increased pressure on already depleted natural resources due to the resource-intensive production and transportation requirements of these products.


2017 ◽  
Vol 119 (8) ◽  
pp. 1839-1853 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paola Mancini ◽  
Andrea Marchini ◽  
Mariarosaria Simeone

Purpose This is an exploratory study on consumer information and behaviour towards green, health, local, social and environmental credentials on labels. It focusses on many dimensions of sustainability in the food products that affect consumer choices with a dual purpose: to identify and define “sustainable consumption” behaviour in broad sense and to investigate empirically the factors affecting the real consumption behaviours. The purpose of this paper is to shed light on consumers’ understanding, motivation and use of sustainable labelling in order to understand the role sustainability information plays in the food products market. Design/methodology/approach Two focus groups in order to investigate consumer motivation and behaviour in-depth and to prepare the questionnaire. Identification of the outcomes that could summarize sustainable consumption combining: purchase of local products, consume only seasonal fruit, prefer products with recyclable packaging, attention to the fat content in foods, give importance to traceability and purchase products only in the place of origin. Identification of the “at risk” virtuous consumer, using a binary logistic regression approach, taking into account demographic characteristics, the food and nutrition value system, experience, knowledge, institutional factors and marketing. Findings Results from the focus groups are mainly in line with the empirical analysis, highlighting the key role of education in influencing consumer attitude and behaviour. Consumers give little attention to information provided on the label for sustainable food consumption and environmental protection and have little knowledge of environmental problems. The virtuous consumer appears to give importance to a better food nutrition value system, to pay more attention to ingredients and instructions on the label, to be more attentive to environmental and sustainable attributes, to be concerned about product quality and to be slightly influenced by brands and special offers. Research limitations/implications The findings from the empirical analysis confirm the results from focus groups even if it was not possible from the empirical analysis to investigate in-depth the marketing aspects concerning the food choice. This limit probably comes from the low number of observations. Further research will focus on these marketing aspects. Practical implications Products with sustainable attributes can become a strategic variable and allow companies to gain a competitive advantage, especially for small- and medium-sized enterprises. This may encourage the development of new marketing channels based on the direct relationship between producer and the new consumer demand, increasingly sensitive to the food security issues. Social implications There is a potential interest and sensitiveness to having sustainable behaviour in a broad sense, but there is a lack of knowledge about how to behave to be sustainable. In the absence of binding rules, it is necessary that government promote information and campaigns to generate greater awareness on sustainability, aiming at increasing knowledge to drive the consumer’s choices. This may lead to virtuous results in terms of reducing social costs related to an unhealthy diet, food waste and unsustainable consumption. Originality/value The results show that despite the appearance of attention to the environment and to healthy food which is associated with this emerging critical consumer in the literature, there remains the problem of the consumer giving little attention to information provided on the label for sustainable food consumption and environmental protection. This is the problem of “rules of thumb” in purchasing decisions that prevail in the following situations: when consumers have an overload of information that exceeds their processing limits; when they tend to base their decision making on heuristics, focussing their choices on brands as a proxy for high-quality, product-related characteristics.


Nutrients ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 1088
Author(s):  
Yuanhao Huang ◽  
Xiaoke Yang ◽  
Xianguo Li ◽  
Qian Chen

(1) Background: Labeling is one of the significant strategies to guide sustainable consumption behaviors. Nowadays, multi labels being displayed on the front-of-pack of food products is a common phenomenon. However, labels seldom operate solo, and competition or complement effects may be exerted on different labels. Therefore, the research objective is to explore the interaction effect when nutrition and low-carbon labels appear simultaneously; (2) Methods: Across four scenario-based experiments, including ice cream, yogurt, steak, and toast, this study manipulated the separate and joint occurrences of low-carbon and nutrition labels, the interaction effect of joint labels was tested, and the serial mediation model, which includes resource allocation and anticipated enjoyment of food consumption, was verified; (3) Results: Results show that people have a positive preference for the nutrition label and the carbon label, respectively, while these two labels working simultaneously attenuate the positive effect of the single label. When facing nutrition and carbon labels simultaneously, people would infer partial resources are allocated to healthy and environmental aspects so they have a lower anticipated enjoyment from food consumption. Thus, these two labels working simultaneously attenuate the positive effect of the single label, and consumers have a lower evaluation of food products. In addition, the joint backfire on the effect is only exerted on people with a higher level of zero-sum bias and only when joint labels have a high consistency of labels; (4) Conclusions: This study solved the contradictory problem of the joint effect of positive labels. The findings in this research contribute to promote sustainable food consumption. We suggest that similar labels should be avoided in the same front-of-pack of food, and manufacturers need to use ads to bring down consumers’ zero-sum bias.


Author(s):  
Tosin Kolajo Gbadegesin

Food security is of great importance in the politics of sustainable consumption and production (SCP) because of its implication on environment and people. The changing climate is adding to world resource problems such as food security, water scarcity, pollution, soil degradation, etc. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and land use demand by agriculture has continued to influence what people quantity and quality of available food. This review used resources from all relevant literatures to examine impact of changing climate on sustainable food consumption by identifying effect of changing climate on nutrition, food production, and food consumption, and provides recommendations on sustainable food consumption measures. The review is of the opinion that food consumption patterns are changing in the face of population growth, economic development, and environmental challenges. Such shifts place increased pressure on already depleted natural resources due to the resource-intensive production and transportation requirements of these products.


2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Elzbieta Gorynska-Goldmann ◽  
Michał Gazdecki

AbstractThe aim of this paper is to present the sources of information about food, the cost of collecting the information and the perception of messages by consumers in the light of the sustainable food consumption idea. We used primary materials from a direct, personal survey which were later analyzed with the use of Berelson’s content analysis method. We found that a consumer shows low interest in sourcing the information about sustainable food consumption. The most credible, from the consumer’s point of view, information about food, consumption and the food market, comes from reports and scientific papers, as well as from the consumers’ families or friends. Gathering information is connected with devoting time which we spend on finding the right content. The information connected to environmental issues was the most distinctive for the respondents; other categories of information concerned the waste of food, shopping planning, the direction of changes, personal health issues and the influence of food products on one’s health, as well as consumption in connection with recommendations concerning health (among others, in the scope of nutrition, recommendations and specialistic advices). The knowledge of the most credible sources of the information about food consumption, the frequency of acquiring such knowledge, the costs of gathering information and the perception of messages should be reflected in properly chosen communication channels for the promotion of sustainable food consumption. In the research over sustainable food consumption we should focus more on our information needs. The network approach and the perspective of active engagement of consumers in the process of creating innovations in food products give us a new approach for the market analysis, popularization of the idea of sustainable food consumption and let us change some deeply rooted habits and behaviors of consumers. As a result of such engagement, consumers will be more willing to cooperate and trust one another, and thanks to the feeling of social effectiveness, they will be more interested in the development of the sustainable food consumption model and food policy.


Author(s):  
Skaidrite Dzene ◽  
Aija Eglite ◽  
Gunta Grinberga-Zalite

The chapter presents an analysis of food consumption macro issues in Latvia. The authors have aggregated scientific literature on various aspects of consumption with an emphasis on sustainable consumption fundamental issues. The purpose of the chapter is to characterise the factors affecting consumer behaviour in food consumption and identify the profiles of the sustainable and unsustainable consumer in Latvia. In scope of the research, the authors have performed analysis of business cycle effects on consumption as well as effects of the state support to promote sustainable food consumption. The empirical research aims to study the present and potential behaviours of consumers, identifying their attitudes and intentions towards purchasing sustainable food products.


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